Belonging
by quantuminferno
Summary: It's the story of my favorite character in 1984, Bumstead... you swear anyone really knows who he is, anyways... this is his story of lies and deceit.
1. Default Chapter

Disclaimer : don't owe anything in this story. well, I don't own the characters, I made up the story though. duh. Okay, don't sue, etc.  
  
A/N: I absolutely love the book 1984 by George Orwell. I think that man is a genius. Okay, yeah, so it's the best book ever (which is quite contestable), so I decided to write a little blurb about my favorite character in the book. He had a really small part and people probably wouldn't even remember who he was, but he was the best prisoner in the Ministry of Love.  
  
Belonging  
  
I guess you could say that human's greatest fault would be the fact that we are communal. that we desire almost more than anything else, to be accepted, to be a part of something, to call our own, to belong. I know that it's my greatest fault; this need to belong and to call my own. That's why I'm here today, in the Ministry of Love. The thought police has nothing on me, besides the fact that I have this need to help people with the secret hope that I will be accepted. Could they really blame me for that?  
  
I guess I'm jumping the gun a bit. I'll start from the beginning. From the way I look, chinless, toothy, and pouch-y cheeks, you would never guess the life that I have led.  
  
My childhood was like that of many of my peers, but the only difference is that I can clearly remember it. I can even remember facts that happened before I was even born. It was the lasting effect from my parents. They remembered every detail of their lives before the Party and Big Brother came. Yes, there was such a time. A time where it wasn't as hard. They often said that they took it for granted. It was a meager living for them, and when the Party came, I guess you could say life got better, but the lies just compounded. My parents were part of the Inner Party. How they achieved that great status is quite beyond me. My mother also tutored me at home. I was never good at being a Spy, but my mom taught me how to act and what to say and respond. I don't think the Party suspected anything. Because of this dual teaching, I began to think for myself. The Thought Police would have had a party if they ever saw into my brain.  
  
That's a lie, too. The Thought Police was a sham. They couldn't read your mind. They could interpret your body language. It was simply that. I should know. In my early twenties, I was hand chosen to become a Thought Police member. I went through the training. I stated all the lies that they wanted me to state. I swallowed and threw back up those lies. I had to make them believe me completely, and they did. They never suspected anything. They never thought that through all my actions, through all the lessons they had taught me, I was a rebel. I was leading a rebellion against them. I was no Goldstein. He was false. He probably was working for the Party anyways. I am not sure if he ever existed. Even I questioned it sometimes.  
  
The Thought Police isn't a squad. That wouldn't be too effective in spotting people. It would be the complete opposite of subtle, it would be offensively obvious. I was placed in the Outer Party. It wasn't a punishment, supposedly, but I know that they trusted me enough to let me go completely under cover. I even turned some people in to the Ministry of Love. however, of course, those people were those gullible ones, that if you even planted a small suggestion in their minds, they would think it true. So if I told them they were thinking thoughts against the Party, they immediately believed it to be true and grabbed onto that fact, and lost their lives for it. They were actually one of the few people who the Party would have made as models for us all.  
  
I was demoted further, if you want to look at it in the social status kind of way. My job was the traverse the proles' living area and spot the Outer Party members that would get away to do. "things." I have seen things that Room 101 would not even compare to. These proles are filthy, and some acts should just not be watched. at all. ever. I didn't become a prole, not like "Mr. Charrington"; but I become one of those Outer Party members who needed to get "some." So, in this position as well, I took control of the situation.  
  
In the meantime, I was able to take control of another situation. How was I going to lead this rebellion against the Party and still come out squeaky clean? Then it hit me; I was with the proles many times, and I knew places that Big Brother didn't know even existed. Now, I could smell a Thought Police miles away and I can see one from even farther, so I was never worried that a "Mr. Charrington" would infiltrate my plans. I set up a school for the proles under ground. My whole setup was underground. It was practically impossible to keep one over ground, so I did with what I had. I taught the proles how to read and write, but most importantly, I taught them history. I taught them justice and human rights. This was going to be movement that the likes of Big Brother had never seen. I called it the Brotherhood. It was mine. I called it my own.  
  
A/N Sorry so short. and a little off, and not too exciting, but school just keeps getting in the way. hopefully, I'll write a better one, but the next chapter will be coming up. Hehe, maybe I should just double space it. ( really though, I feel bad cuz it's so short.  
  
Please R/R 


	2. Empathy

Disclaimer : don't owe anything in this story. well, I don't own the characters, I made up the story though. duh. Okay, don't sue, etc.  
  
A/N: Wow, this isn't going the way I planned, but wherever a story leads you, might as well go with the flow, rite? Well, we'll see how it goes.  
  
And I suddenly realized that the last chapter had typos. my bad. Hopefully, you could understand, though. if anyone reads this, that is. ( you never know.  
  
Empathy  
  
The sad part of all of this is that it was never really a Brotherhood. It wasn't like what I had in mind. I guess you could say that I was an idealist, and I guess I couldn't really argue with that. The problem is that with all my idealism reality didn't follow in suit. I shouldn't have thought otherwise (but then, would I really be an idealist if I did). Reality has this sort of thing with pushing down the mind and raising up the physical aspect of everything. Survival of the fittest.  
  
Funny. The Brotherhood is as fit as Big Brother. Big Brother's power stems from the lies that are fed to the people everyday. Lies are strong because it can be molded and manipulated, as can people be molded and manipulated. Lies are strong, but not the strongest. The stronger aspect of Big Brother was fear and the absence of intelligence. Fear of vaporization. Fear of death. Fear of nonexisting. They are all the same fears. It all leads to the same thing in the long run.  
  
I was never corrupted as a child, so I stayed free from that. As I became older, I no longer feared death. No longer feared that with time people would completely forget me. It never really mattered. People are forgotten every day. In fact, every moment. The Past is changed and there is no certainty in anything. The mind is weak when it has been trained to not work. Big Brother has trained it to be so. I could not expect anything better from the people that have not had any other choice in life.  
  
I on the other hand, have a terrible memory. Not terrible in the sense that it does not contain anything, but by the fact that it contains everything. Gift or Curse? I'm not sure. Never sure. Doubt. hmm. I guess that I don't doubt. It is both. I remember every face I see and every sound I hear. There is nothing that gets past my senses. There is no way. No truth has come my way that I have yet to forget. Nor any lie. There is no escaping it though. There is no escaping the lies. There is only escaping reality.  
  
The escape is to deny reality.  
  
That is where the key lies. That is where the power of my Brotherhood stems from. The reality of the moment is that there is only this moment. We must escape the reality that Big Brother has made for us all. To escape we need to deny reality. It was not easy. It was never said that it would be easy. In a way, I believe in one of the concepts of Big Brother, that the only thing you can be sure of is a moment. For once you believe in that moment, it is already past, and you can no longer be sure of it.  
  
I taught the ethic of living in the moment. Living with what is present, but remembering what was in the past. To remember is to learn. To forget is to live in vain. If Big Brother's power was from ignorance, fear, and power, than I would say that the Brotherhood was based on intelligence, courage, and strategy.  
  
Courage could not be taught, but it could be forced from people. There is a limit to which all people will turn from their cowardly ways and face their opponent. I was waiting for that moment. That moment never came in my lifetime. That moment would not come so quickly.  
  
And, strategy would only work for so long. Strategy is the starting point. Strategy with no strength was a poor policy, a failing one at that. Strategy also required intelligence which was hard going in general.  
  
The proles. sigh. what can I say about the proles? Nothing bad, I hope. I could think of numerous bad statements to make about the proles, but they are better compared to the Party members. That is the reason I created the Brotherhood based with proles. They are the future. It is undeniable. There is no way that the Party members, Inner or Outer could or ever would try to coup. A coup from the brainwashed part of society is ludicrous. I mock it in my head just to think of it.  
  
So, educate the proles and hope that human nature and human desires will take over. That was my hope. My hope was not in vain though. The Brotherhood was. not a religion because there was no god involved with it. It was humans versus humans. If it got any more complicated than that, then the Brotherhood would never survive. The fact that I could simplify the life that Big Brother made for the proles was a leading force that attracted these people. I opened their eyes to some greater life. A life that everyone deserved. I did not teach them to hate the Party members but to hate the leaders. To hate the fact that both the Outer Party members and the proles lived a life that was not worth anything to Big Brother.  
  
I placed the ideas of rebellion in their head. I placed it in their heart. I planted it in their very being. That was the Brotherhood. I did not want it to be like that. I didn't want it to become another mindless action led by some human that wanted to play God, that wanted to have all the power. I did not want the power. I wanted the power to be distributed. I wanted equality. I wanted change. A revolution. That's what I craved for.  
  
Power never held any interest to me. I could have gone higher up the Big Brother Party chain, but something inside me rebelled. That is what the Brotherhood is. It is the part of everyone that rebels against something that feels so wrong that the discord of it reverberates through the bones and does not stop until action is taken. Action to change something when no one else will.  
  
Mindless. It was never supposed to be action without thought. It was supposed to be the action that required deep thought. It was an inner conflict fought in the realm of physicality. It was frustrating. This Brotherhood. Ever since I was younger I could not stand the condition of life Big Brother made everyone (minus the Inner Party) live in. It was filth and inhumane. I could almost feel it. I made myself feel it. Another reason I wanted to work with the proles was so that I could somehow help them. Somehow make their lives less. dirty. Less, something that they would just give in to. They didn't know that their lives were supposed to be so much better than Big Brother made it to be. They didn't feel badly for themselves though, they didn't know any better. They probably only knew worse.  
  
The empathy I had ripped the inside of my heart every day. I went undercover for a while, when I was just starting as a thought spy. I was a prole. They made me live as a prole. They made me remain in the proles' living towns for months. I guess they thought that if you even survived with the bombings and still remained faithful to Big Brother, than you could be a part of the thought police. It wasn't a life I would choose to live, but I could. I could survive, and that is where my inspiration came from. These proles that were my neighbors. They were the embodiment of hope.  
  
The Brotherhood comes from empathy. Empathy, unfortunately cannot be taught. It cannot be ordered into someone. So, this emotion that ran so deep in my veins caused the whole movement. The Brotherhood was a movement of emotions. Big Brother wanted to kill it. Wanted to kill the loyalties we had to individuals. Those are the most important emotions we possess. The ones that go beyond our own welfare and into the next realm of caring. Big Brother cut that off when they severed the family ties.  
  
Emotion.  
  
It would be my demise. 


End file.
